Many real estate
websites appear attractive but underperform extremely when it comes to
generating more sales, leads and ideal clients. Websites are a huge investment
for any business – both in regards to the time necessary to design and build
them as well as the ongoing and initial costs. Thus, your website should be
making you money and returning on that investment. Unfortunately, for several
agents and real estate businesses, their real estate website is nothing more
than a piece of stationery.
An online business card if you will. They
reconstruct their website every few years and once it goes live, that’s it.
They do not touch it, they do not update it and then a few years later they decide
to reconstruct their website because it is not generating leads and the cycle begins
again.
Apart from aesthetics, a real
estate website should have the following:
- Social proof throughout the entire site
It has been found that eighty
percent of the traffic to a testimonial page on a real estate website is
actually from the staff in the office. Thus rather than allowing testimonials
only live on one page, place them all through your website where they can be
seen by potential clients clearly:
- On your property management services page, show testimonials from tenants and landlords.
- On your ‘sell with us’ page, display testimonials from past vendors.
- On your agent profiles, show reviews that belong to that agent.
- Clear calls-to-action for your core client
The primary function of the
majority real estate websites is ‘property search’. Jump onto your website home
page at once. The trouble with this approach is that most of the buyers
and renters never visit a real estate agency website when they are searching for
a new home. Buyers and tenants are visiting the major portals. Thus, by
prioritizing property search on your website, you have dedicated all of that
real estate essentially for the wrong audience. Sure, your website should have
the capability for people to search for listings and that experience should be
remarkable. But it should not be the primary function. From the order of your
navigation items to the calls-to-action spread all through your website, your
website should be speaking to potential vendors and landlord clients directly.
- Simple signup forms
Visitors do not want to fill out
long forms. The delusion among real estate agents is that you will get more
competent leads if you ask for more information up front on your website forms.
The authenticity is however that the more fields you add, the more likely you
will lose high quality leads as they do not have the time to fill in your
complex forms with a million questions. Ask for the name, address, phone
number, email – and get the rest when you speak with them over the phone, or
via email if that is their preferred communication channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment